Glacier Country

Once the weather cleared in Hokitika we travelled south. We had plans for a hot soak at Franz Joseph, followed by a helicopter ride around Mt Cook, over the glaciers, complete with a glacier landing, so we were pretty excited about this leg of the trip.

We had been told about road damage from friends who had already travelled the route, but we were not prepared for the extent of the damage, particularly when going over the roads of Mt Hercules. It seemed that around every corner was another huge slip. The amount of money spent on this area of the country must be colossal.

Before we got into Franz Joseph, we took a short detour out to the coast to visit a lagoon called Okarito, apparently home to the White Herons, although we did not see any. However, the area was spectacularly beautiful.

We found out from the information boards that the herons have a nesting colony further round the lagoon and you have to kayak to get to it.

The area was originally a rich source of gold, with nuggets bwing found on the beach of the lagoon. In 1866 no less than 2000 ounces of gold was shipped out of Okarito. However, the prosperity was very short lived.

We headed back to the main road, past Lake Mapourika, towards Franz Joseph. There are lots of lakes (some small and some not so small) but Lake Mapourila is, in my view, the most scenic.

Further down the road a little is Lake Paringa, which is a popular freedom camping spot but not for the likes of us who have dogs though. Because of this we had a quick look and moved on.

We reached Franz Joseph in time for a nice hot soak, and also a birthday lunch given to us by Catherine and Blair. As we remembered from 3 years ago, the place was packed and it was hard to find a parking spot, but we managed. However, we decided not to go up to the glacier this time, as we had walked up there previously. We decided to leave that for Fox Glacier, so we headed on down the coast to our parking place for the night, ready for our chopper ride at 10am.

As it turned out, low cloud obscured Mt Cook so the helicopter ride was delayed for two hours. While we were waiting we drove out to the Mt Cook Viewing point getting just a brief glimpse before cloud moved to cover it, and we never got a look at it again. The chopper ride was cancelled. The road out to the lookout was charming though, with some quintessential NZ scenery, with Fox Glacier as a backdrop.

We decided to walk the track to the glacier, knowing that this had also been damaged with the recent bad weather as well. From the track we got some great views of the glacier and the river coming from it. Again, a lot of work had been done to repair the track, but access to the swingbridge is no longer available.

The following morning we headed down to Hass, for a couple of nights there as a base to visit Jackson Bay. Jackson Bay is the last bay on the west coast coast road and we had heard great things about it. First though, we called in to Ship Creek.

This is a beautiful little bay that got it’s name because the wreck of a ship was found here in 1867. Apparently it took some detective work in Scotland to find it was the wreck of the clipper Schomberg.